


Head Games

by galaxysoup



Category: Teen Titans (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-02-02
Updated: 2005-02-02
Packaged: 2017-10-25 23:56:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/276264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galaxysoup/pseuds/galaxysoup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bart’s being Bart. Tim’s being Tim. This can’t possibly end well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Head Games

**Author's Note:**

> Continuity-wise, this takes place post Identity Crisis. Familiarity with _Young Justice_ 53, _Robin_ 153, and _Teen Titans_ 4 is also a good idea.

When Bart found Tim, he was brooding over the Tower computer system. Bart skidded to a stop next to him, making several stacks of meticulously ordered paperwork fly around in little cyclone shapes. Tim did a Bat-Scowl.

“Do you know what ‘strathspey’ means?” Bart demanded.

Tim paused in his paper-restacking. “Never heard of it. Why do you ask?”

“No reason, just curious.” Bart zipped to Tim’s other side, making the papers fly again. “Whatcha doing?” He peered at the computer screen. It looked like shipping invoices. _Bludhaven_ shipping invoices, which meant that Tim was using the Tower computers for non-Titans business, which was Against The Rules.

To his credit, Tim looked a little embarrassed. Bart could tell because the tips of Tim’s ears got slightly pink and the fingers on his right hand twitched like he wanted to minimize the screen really fast.

Either that or he was restraining himself from grabbing Bart and doing something evil and Batlike to him. These days, it was sometimes hard to tell.

“Just a little research.”

“It looks boring,” Bart commented, and if Tim answered back he never heard it because he had gone to see if Kon had any of those really good _obviously_ homemade sugar cookies left that Bart kind of suspected had been baked by Superman.

****

Ten minutes later, the cookies were definitely gone and Kon had threatened him twice with bodily harm, which was pretty average for an afternoon’s work. Bart wandered back into the control room, making Tim’s papers fly around again. Tim had moved on from the shipping invoices and was hacking his way through the Bludhaven Police Department’s database.

“Is ‘Cellardyke’ lesbian porn?”

Tim’s fingers did a little stumbly thing on the keyboard and the screen flickered and turned blue.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Cellardyke,” Bart explained patiently, making extra sure he was talking slowly enough for Tim to understand. “Is that porn?”

Tim’s eyebrows rose high enough to be visible even behind his mask. “As far as I know it’s a town in Scotland,” he said after a moment.

Bart frowned. Boring. “Okay.”

Maybe Gar would be up for a little Animal Planet. He had ten minutes to kill before he could reasonably get away with bothering Tim again and it was _always_ worth it to watch Gar turn into everything that came on screen.

****

“Did you know there are towns named Gothenburg and Drakenburg? It’s, like, you but German,” Bart said brightly.

Oooh. Okay, the Bat-Scowl had definitely escalated to a Bat-Glare. Bart hastily picked up the newly-scattered papers and stacked them neatly, glancing through them as he went. Autopsy reports, stamped with the Bludhaven PD logo.

“Bart, how much caffeine have you had today?” Gritting his teeth like that couldn’t be good for Tim’s temporo-mandibular joint. Or his teeth. Bart bet Tim’s dentist just had _fits_ every time he went in for a checkup.

“Speedster metabolism, caffeine doesn’t do anything,” Bart said, kicking up the cheer another notch to counter the sudden increase in irritability coming from Tim’s direction, and rearranged the files from alphabetical into reverse-alphabetical order and back again.

“Look, Bart, I’m really trying to get something done here. Would you mind not bothering me for a while? Go... do a million laps around San Francisco or something.”

Bart sighed gustily. It was a little annoying that even Tim thought he could still be distracted by that kind of suggestion.

Not to mention it wouldn’t take much time at _all_.

****

“Bart!” Tim yelled.

Bart did a quick check of the control room. The computer was off, since Tim was doing paperwork, and the paperwork was fine, because Tim had been holding it down with one hand. He did a mental count – it had been _fifteen whole minutes_ since he’d bothered Tim last, which Bart thought was pretty good considering he’d had to stop two robberies and a mugging while he was circumnavigating San Francisco.

“What?”

“Will you _please_ just let me get this done!”

Bart made his eyes extra-big and lost-looking. It was worth a shot, anyway.

Tim sighed and relented. Bart smirked, but did it really fast so no one could see it.

“What do you want?” Tim asked grudgingly.

“I just had a question,” Bart said quietly, doing his best to look pathetic.

Tim rubbed his forehead and put down his pen. “What is it?”

“What’s a Cutty Sark?”

“It was a clipper ship built in the late eighteen hundreds,” Tim said wearily. That teeth-grinding thing sure wasn’t getting any better yet.

“Huh,” Bart said, and went off to see if Vic needed any help rewiring the gym after that last training session when Cassie lassooed Kon against the light switch by mistake.

****

Tim didn’t look like he’d made much progress on the stack of reports. Actually, he looked pretty frazzled. Bart checked the stack, super-quick. Tim was only through last Saturday, and Bart took a moment to wonder at Tim’s obsessive need to go over all the crimes that had happened in Bludhaven while he’d been at the Tower.

“What do you want this time?”

Uh-oh. Bat-Growl. A little distracted-sounding, though. If that had been a full-power Growl, Bart probably would have been nervous.

“What’s Friday’s Child?”

“Friday’s Child?”

“You know, the poem. Monday’s child, full of grace, Tuesday’s child with a pretty face. Or maybe the other way around? Anyway, I can remember all of them except for Friday.”

“I don’t know, Bart. Look it up. And stop bothering me. I can’t concentrate with you asking all these questions.”

Bart smiled, and decided to get himself cotton candy at the Pier as a reward.

****

This time Tim seemed to be expecting him. He gave Bart a dry look over his stack of files, and set down his pen.

“What Shakespeare play had the Dunsinane thing in it?” Bart asked.

“I find it hard to believe the San Francisco Public Library didn’t have a copy of Macbeth, Bart.”

Oooh. Busted.

“…It was out?”

Okay, Tim definitely wasn’t buying the innocent act. “Why do you keep asking me all this stuff? It’s not like you can’t find the answers yourself, if you don’t know them already.”

Bart sighed and gave up. “You were doing that thing," he said reluctantly.

Tim frowned, but it was the thoughtful frown, not the scary lurking-in-the-shadows frown. “What thing?”

“You know, that thing.” Bart leaned forward and poked the side of Tim’s head, skipping back out of range before Tim could react. “Where you’re in your head too much. It's not good for you.”

Tim glanced away and looked furious at himself for doing it. “I have more work to do now, Bart,” he said. “I don’t have time to just hang out any more.”

Bart rolled his eyes. He might be a little flighty and he might, technically, only be four years old, but if there was one thing he always knew it was how long people took to do things. “Rumination Theory says that if you brood too much you get depressed. And worrying leads to neuroses and obsessive-compulsive tendencies and I think mentally you should probably try to stay right about where you are now because you’re starting to get obsessive like someone we all know whose name rhymes with ‘Batman’.”

Tim gave a tiny flinch but didn’t look up from the table, and after a minute Bart left, going slowly enough that he wouldn’t disturb anything.

****

Ten eternities later, there was a knock on Bart’s bedroom door.

“Bart?” Tim’s voice was muffled but he sounded just a tiny bit hesitant so Bart let him in extra fast.

“What?”

Tim held up a deck of Trivial Pursuit cards and raised one eyebrow questioningly.

Bart grinned.


End file.
